JAVA BEANS

A Java Bean is a software component that has been designed to be reusable in a variety
of different environments. There is no restriction on the capability of a Bean. It may
perform a simple function, such as checking the spelling of a document, or a complex
function, such as forecasting the performance of a stock portfolio. A Bean may be
visible to an end user. One example of this is a button on a graphical user interface.
A Bean may also be invisible to a user. Software to decode a stream of multimedia
information in real time is an example of this type of building block. Finally, a Bean
may be designed to work autonomously on a user’s workstation or to work in
cooperation with a set of other distributed components. Software to generate a pie
chart from a set of data points is an example of a Bean that can execute locally.
However, a Bean that provides real-time price information from a stock or
commodities exchange would need to work in cooperation with other distributed
software to obtain its data.
You will see shortly what specific changes a software developer must make to a
class so that it is usable as a Java Bean. However, one of the goals of the Java designers
was to make it easy to use this technology. Therefore, the code changes are minimal.